“We were right, then!” said Flora. “They were being washed.”
“They were being dyed,” said Fairweller. “For mourning. Good day.”
Fairweller left before the girls could ask him any more questions. Instead, after the door had slammed, the girls turned to Azalea, their faces puzzled.
“Morning?” said Flora.
“Oh,” said Azalea. She had forgotten about this part of a person’s death: the isolation, the clocks, the clothes, the rules, the entire year of it—and the silence. Now, it came back, a heavy weight. She exhaled slowly. “Mourning.”
Delphinium screamed when they found their dresses, hanging from lines in the kitchen like black shadows. Every stitch of cloth they owned had been dyed unrecognizable.
“It’s just a color,” said Azalea soothingly as Delphinium cried over her favorite rose-colored dress, now black. “It’s all right.” She helped unpin the dry dresses and laid them neatly on the servants’ table, a pile for each girl. Some were still in the large washtub, billowing night in black dye.
Azalea had the girls dress right there in the kitchen, over bowls of hot porridge. And while they dressed, Azalea told them everything she knew about mourning.
She told them about how balls and promenades and courting weren’t allowed, and how they were to keep inside, not even allowed out to the gardens. She told them that the windows would be draped for a year and that they would have to get used to wearing black for a year, too. And she told them about the clocks, how they would be stopped at the time of the person’s death, and that music wasn’t allowed, either.
It took a while. When she had finished, the girls all looked like miserable, drooping black blossoms.
“Is d-dancing allowed?” Clover stammered.
Azalea bit her lip and turned her head away.
“Oooh!” Delphinium lifted a dainty hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and fell back onto the wood floor. Thum-thump thump.
She lay on the floor, unmoving.
“Oh, get up, Delphi,” said Bramble. “When people really faint, they bang their heads up on the floor. It’s very unromantic.”
“A year!” Delphinium cried. “We’re not allowed to dance for a year! I’ll die without dancing!”
“M-Mother would let us dance,” Ivy peeped.
At the mention of Mother, the girls’ composure, frayed already, fell apart, and Azalea found herself in the midst of sobbing girls.
Azalea wanted to sob, too. She hated this feeling, one of dancing a step she did not know, confused, bumbling over her dance slippers to get it right. It happened so rarely—she knew every dance—that fumbling through the movement frightened her.
This was a thousand times worse. The palace, known for its tall, mullioned windows that dappled light through the halls, would be muffled with drapery, turning day into pitch-black. They would be kept inside, trapped in a cage like those peeping birds at the wire-and-bottle shop on Hampton Street, and only allowed out on Royal Business…which would not be often. If Mother were here—
Azalea’s throat grew tight, and her chin trembled. She hated herself for it. Mother would have known what to do. Biting her lip to keep from crying, Azalea pulled out Mother’s handkerchief. Silver shone in the light, followed by that peculiar tingling sensation. Azalea’s throat untightened, and she was able, almost, to smile. There was something to that handkerchief. Azalea did not know what.
But Azalea did know one thing: She was a fast learner. When she fumbled through a dance step, it was only a moment before she caught the rhythm and glided back into the motions. If Mother could smooth things over, then she could, too.
Azalea helped Delphinium up from the floor, and lifted five-year-old Ivy to the table, spooning her a bit of extra porridge from the pot. Ivy had an insatiable appetite. Azalea gently wiped faces and soothed their cries.
“Hush,” said Azalea. “It’s only for a year. I’ll watch out for you all. I promise.”
The next evening, the girls set the table in the dining room, their moods as dark as the drapery. The dining room was a fine old space, with a long table, cabinets, and arched doorways flanked with curtains. The hearth in the great fireplace cast a light over their sullen faces, not really making up for the muffled window light. They heard the tower chime seven, the silverware clinking against the plates.
“They can’t stop that clock,” said Delphinium, raising her pointed chin. “You’d need an actual clocksmith for that.”
Azalea loved the huge clock and bells at the top of the palace, creaking through the hours and chiming in off-tune peals. It made the palace feel alive, something she desperately needed now that everything had been stifled.
“The King wouldn’t allow it to be stopped,” said Azalea, helping Kale onto her chair. “Mother loved it too much.”
At the mention of the King, the girls grew quiet. Flora raised a dainty finger, as though she were in lessons.
“Lea,” she said. “Do you—do you think he meant it? When he said—”
“Of course not,” said Azalea, giving her and her twin, Goldenrod, an encouraging smile. “He’s just aggrieved. Like in one of Eve’s storybooks.”
“I don’t know.” Eve stared at her plate. “In storybooks the children call their father Papa.” She removed her spectacles and rubbed her eyes.
Azalea paused. They had never been exactly close to the King, but he had always come to breakfast and dinner, at least. It was a rule they had, to eat dinner as a family. Now, these past several days, he had remained in the library, tending to Royal Business and ignoring them all.
“He’s missed every meal since Christmas Eve,” said Delphinium. “And he’s not coming now. I feel like an orphan.”
As if on cue, the King’s voice echoed down the hall, stiff, firm words that were indiscernible but most definitely out of the library. The girls lunged for the doors, but Azalea held them back.
“Brush down your skirts, everyone, hands in your lap. Clover, make them presentable. Bramble and I will fetch him. Behave.” Azalea cast a lofty look at Delphinium. “Orphans, for heaven’s sake.”
Through the dark halls of faded wallpaper and mismatched portraits to the entrance hall, Azalea grasped Bramble’s hand. Bramble squeezed back equally hard. Azalea hadn’t thought she missed the King, his hard adherence to rules and his formalities, but the giddiness in her chest proved otherwise.
Arriving at the entrance hall, they found the King outside the library in discussion with a young gentleman. The gentleman looked up when Azalea and Bramble brushed in. Even though the entrance hall was dimly lit, black linen over the windows, light still caught in the gentleman’s warm brown eyes. Lord Bradford!
The King looked up, too, and a frown etched his face. His beard was well trimmed and his suit crisp, but he looked half starved. Azalea felt grateful they would have fish pies for dinner. They filled a person up.
“You’re finally out!” said Bramble. “It’s about time!”
“We’re waiting for you, in the dining room,” said Azalea. “We won’t start without you.”
“Rule number eighteen,” Bramble reminded.
The frown lines in the King’s face deepened.
“I have business to tend to,” he said. Cold, formal, stiff. “This young gentleman is going to stop the tower for mourning.”
“Stop the tower!” Bramble flushed. “What? Sir, you can’t! Mother loved it! She even had a bucky little dance for it—you remember!” She grasped the King’s hand, a plea in her face.
Bramble! thought Azalea. The King’s ice blue eyes grew even harder and colder at the word “Mother.”
“It’s all right,” said Azalea quickly, hoping to smooth things. “I’ll escort him to the tower. You can go to dinner.”
“Very well. You may escort him. And you, young lady”—the King tugged his hand from Bramble’s grasp—“will tend to your sisters, at once.”
Azalea’s chest trilled with hope, right up until the King strode past her to
the entrance hall doors, taking his coat from the stand and yanking the door open. Hope sputtered into indignation. He was—he was leaving! Azalea stopped the door with her boot before he shut it, biting back the pain.
“You can’t leave,” she whispered fiercely. “And you can’t stay in the library, either. This is more important than R.B. We need you!”
The King released the carved doorknob and left. In a fit of temper, Azalea slammed it after him.
Why was the King being like this? He had never been the way Mother was, but he had never been like this. Everything was tense and tangled, but Azalea felt she could still manage it all if the King was there. Now she felt abandoned.
Bramble’s chin tightened at the door. She swallowed, then snapped to Lord Bradford.
“You!” she snarled, her yellow-green eyes flaring. “You!”
She dashed down the hall in a rustle of black skirts and deep red hair. Her footfalls echoed.
Only now Azalea realized she had been clenching her fists, hard. She slowly unclenched them, and in the dim light saw the crescent-moon marks her nails had dug into her palms. A bit of skin curled up around each mark, as though Azalea had dug into a bar of soap instead of her hand.
A polite cough sounded, and Azalea flushed, remembering Lord Bradford. She turned.
“I didn’t mean—” he said, in his rich voice. He kneaded his hat rim.
“Of course not,” said Azalea. “Things are a bit unstrung here. How is your hand?”
“Better,” he said solemnly. “Thank you.”
True to her word, though feeling wrung inside, Azalea led him up the main stairs of the palace. She didn’t say much. He spoke, filling the silence in a mellow baritone way, of how he owned the clock shop on Silver Street, and the King had sent for the clocksmith, but Mr. Grunnings was out, and that he himself knew quite a bit about clock mechanisms, so he came instead.
“I know it isn’t allowed to visit, in mourning,” he said haltingly. “But I thought if it was Royal Business…” He paused. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. About your mother. She had the nicest laugh, I think, of anyone I ever knew.”
Azalea wanted to burst into tears and throw her arms around his neck. Instead she turned, several stairs above him, feeling the polished banister beneath her hand. She considered his rumpled blond-brown hair and, in a quick movement, reached out and smoothed it down. She had wanted to do that since the Yuletide.
Bemusement passed over Lord Bradford’s face, and Azalea, face hot, led him up the rickety stairs to the tower attic.
The tower stood above the entrance hall, square and symmetrical and old. It smelled of sweet must, with a tang of metal. She had to shield her eyes when they reached the main platform. Sunlight streamed through the glass clockface, casting shadowed numbers across the floor. The gears and pulleys clanged and creaked.
Lord Bradford examined it all with fascination, touching each large carriage-wheel-sized gear, his eyes lighting with excitement.
“This is magic,” he said, pointing up to the main gear that turned the rod and hands. “I was wondering how the counterweights could propel themselves without any steam or force. Look.”
Azalea peered at the gear. Near the center, marked like a smithy’s brand, was a DE, identical to the tea set’s. The D’Eathe mark.
“It must be,” she said. “There are still pockets of magic about, from when the High King lived here.”
It should have frightened her, thinking of the palace as once evil and magicked, with the candelabras and ceiling murals alive, but it didn’t. It was hard to be frightened of a building that smelled of old toast. Once, Azalea guessed, it had been intimidating and grand, with magic walls you could walk through and flues that didn’t have birds nesting in them. When the High King was killed—first poisoned, several times, then shot with pistols, then his head cut off, then burned in the great palace fire…no one really liked to talk about it—Harold the First had somehow unmagicked the palace, rebuilt it, and made it a decent home to live in.
Only bits of magic remained. Like the tea set, and the tower.
“My father used to speak of the magic in the palace,” said Lord Bradford, walking to the tiny fireplace on the side of the platform. Azalea could feel the floorboards beneath her feet move with each of his steps. “He said when they were boys, he and your father used to play together in the magic passages.”
Azalea’s eyebrows rose.
How odd to think of the King playing. Or even as a boy. But as Lord Bradford took a small shovel from the hearth stand and walked back to her, the floorboards creaking again, Azalea said, “Magic passages? Here? In our palace?”
Lord Bradford smiled a small, crooked smile, and leaned to her conspiratorially, underneath the slow-turning rod. Azalea drew closer, and caught the scent of linen and a touch of pine.
“That mark, the D’Eathe mark, when it’s on brick, marks a hidden passage. Did you know that? You can open it by rubbing silver on it.”
“Really!” said Azalea.
“If I recall, though, he said they were only used as storage rooms now.” Lord Bradford shrugged apologetically. “Unexciting, I’m afraid.”
Azalea nodded but shelved this piece of information in the back of her mind.
With the task at hand and still holding the shovel, Lord Bradford slipped up a small set of ladder stairs to the bells-and-gears platform, just above her. The mass of machinery and creaking gears hid him, and Azalea bit her lip and curled her toes in her boots. Far too soon, a gritty, rusty squeaking seized the air. And then silence fell. The ticking halted. Azalea reached up and touched the clock-hand rod, feeling her stomach turn as the rod did not.
Lord Bradford emerged from the gears without the shovel, his face sober again. Azalea, eager to leave, led him down the stairs.
He seemed to sense she was not in the mood for conversation and kept a solemn silence between them.
Azalea stopped when a thump sounded and Lord Bradford gave a soft “Oo.”
“Are you all right?” said Azalea.
“Um, yes,” he said after a pause.
“Attack!”
The battle cry echoed throughout the tower, making the bells reverberate. Bramble’s voice! At once potatoes flew through the air. Thump! Thump! Thump-thump! In the dim light at the bottom of the stairs were all the girls, their skirts pulled up like baskets as they threw. Potatoes rained, hitting brick walls, the spindly railing, thumping against the wood floor, and hitting Lord Bradford. He blocked them dexterously with his arm.
“Have you all run mad?” cried Azalea. “Stop at once—ow!”
A potato boffed her on the side of her head. Delphinium lobbed another one, which Lord Bradford caught in his tall hat before it hit her.
“What are you doing?” said Azalea, running down the remaining steps. “Eve! Flora and Goldenrod! And Clover—not you!”
Clover, who had not thrown anything at all, stepped back, blushing to tears.
“And you,” said Azalea, turning on Bramble. “What are you, three?”
Bramble at least had the decency to look ashamed. For about two seconds. Then she raised her chin, coloring angrily.
“We can’t just do nothing,” she said. “If he doesn’t start the tower again, we’ll never be on time for anything, and if we’re never on time—”
“The King will be even crosser than he was before!” said Delphinium.
“He’s leaving for war soon and we may never even see him again.” Goldenrod’s voice broke.
Once again, Azalea stood in the midst of girls, the familiar chin wobbles and wet cheeks overcoming them. Jessamine curled up on the floor, her lacy pantelettes poking up in black ruffles, and began to wail in a tiny crystalline voice.
“I have a watch.”
Azalea started, remembering Lord Bradford. He stepped to the bottom of the stairs and offered his hand to Azalea. On it lay a gold watch, chain, and fob.
“Please take it,” he said. “You can keep it in your po
cket, hidden away for mourning, and you can still keep time.”
Azalea could tell it was an heirloom. The gold between the ornamental swirls had been worn down to black.
“We can’t take that,” said Azalea.
Bramble snatched the pocket watch from his hand and drew back, holding it against her chest.
“You—!” Azalea made to fetch it back, but Bramble pulled far out of her grasp.
“We’re keeping it for ransom,” said Bramble. “You can have it back when you set the tower.”
Lord Bradford bowed. “As you say,” he said.
“It’s ours until then.”
“Just so.”
“You can’t get it back until then.”
“As you say.”
“And—and—well—all right, then,” said Bramble.
Sick with embarrassment, Azalea picked up the potatoes while the younger girls crowded about Bramble, who showed them how a pocket watch wound and clicked open and shut. Not until everything had been tidied did Azalea realize Lord Bradford was no longer in the room.
Azalea flew out the tower door, through the hall to the entrance hall mezzanine. He was just leaving. Azalea, breathless, stopped at the top of the stairs and leaned against the banister.
“Sir,” she called out. “Lord Bradford.”
He turned. His eyes lit up, seeing Azalea.
“Thank you,” said Azalea.
Lord Bradford bowed deeply, removing his hat, which re-rumpled his hair. When he straightened, he was smiling, as crooked as his cravat, and Azalea couldn’t help but smile back.
CHAPTER 5
The funeral was the next day. The princesses huddled together beside the grave, as far away from the stone as they could without being disrespectful. The graveyard was filled to the brim with mourners, overflowing to the street, all in black suits, black veils and bonnets. Horses for the procession had been brushed with black dye; streetlamps swathed with black fabric. Everything, black.
Snow fell, stark pieces of white against the scene.
The King stood across the grave from them, with members of parliament. He kept his hands firmly to his sides and sucked in his cheeks, which he did when he was displeased. He did not look at the grave. He did not look at them. He looked at…nothing.